The Trouble With War

It sounds almost absurd to need to point out that "war is usually bad" but in a world where John McCain is taken seriously, more people need to listen to John Quiggin:

Finally reaching a conclusion, the central error in pro-war thinking is the belief that every war has a winner. On the contrary, in war there are far more losers than winners, and in most cases there are no real winners apart from the merchants of death mentioned above. Even those who seem to win have usually sowed the seeds of future disaster. The only sane response to war is to end it as soon as possible.

It's obviously possible to find a few exceptions to this in history, but they're really, really rare and as he says "I’m more and more convinced that arguments for war, or about the conduct of war, that rely solely on WWII should come under the same embargo as other arguments that invoke Hitler and Nazism." WWII aside, the main class of successful wars seems to be things like Gulf War I, where a campaign was undertaken for very limited defensive objectives. Over time, I think the wisdom showed by George H.W. Bush and other coalition leaders at that point when they decided not to press momentary advantage and transform the fighting into a larger war with only illusory gains looks more and more impressive.